By the Gazette Editorial Board The recent establishment of the World Council of Muslim Minorities has been dictated by a two-way challenge facing Muslims living outside the Islamic world. According to the figure announced at the international congress of Muslim minorities held in Abu Dhabi, where the council will be based, there are around 500 million Muslims living and working in non-Muslim societies. The rise of Islamophobia in the wake of the 9/11 events, and the emergence in recent years of a world-wide terror wave in association with the creation of Daesh and its affiliate groups, have put some Muslims on the defensive and some others on the offensive. Muslim minorities have found themselves having to face harsh criticism of Islam and its followers by fellow citizens in host countries. Moreover, when Muslims around the world have in fact been aggrieved by terrorist attacks against Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslim minorities in these countries have had to shoulder the responsibility of proving that Islam is a faith of tolerance. At the same time there is the threat of Muslim minorities being radicalised in reaction to the spread of Islamophobia and the success of the extremist media machinein taking advantage ofsome young Muslims' poor knowledge of their faith or their anger over certain racist practices in some host countries. Some Muslim minorities, like the one in Myanmar, are facing systematic oppression and extremely difficult living conditions. These minorities are deprived of their human rights which the world, the Muslim nation in particular, has to defend. The Council will be concerned with socio-political and economic issues pertaining to Muslim communities in various parts of the world. In co-operation with minority institutions in these countries the council will help Muslims integrate into their societies. The fact is that these minorities- let's say communities- are required to strike a balance between their status as members of a Muslim community that has its traditions and culture and their obligations towards the societies that have opened their arms to them. In his address to the congress, the Mufti of Egypt Shawki Allam stressed that coexistence and citizenship should be the key to the Muslims' integration in host countries. He made clear that the Madina Charter, which the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) drew up after migrating from Mecca to Madina, had established at this early stage of his message, the rules of coexistence and had upheld the values of tolerance, mercy and co-operation between the various groups that lived in Madina. Islam carries a message of peaceful coexistence between people of different races, creeds and nationalities. But the deafening explosions, caused by the present-day conflicts in the Muslim world,seem to have muted this message.
